SK Telecom to Commercialize 5-Band CA in Next Month

SK Telecom is going to commercialize world’s first 5-Band CA (Carrier Aggregation) that can download a 2GB movie in just 23 seconds next month. With this technology, it will end an evolution of LTE, which is the major technology of 4G network, and signal a new evolution that will start 5G network. (Reference: page 2 and 4 of The Electronic Times issued on 4/5/17)

SK Telecom announced on the 20th that it will apply 5-Band CA to ‘Galaxy S8’ and commercialize it next month. 5-Band CA is seen as the best LTE technology that combines 5 frequencies. It is the final step of CA standards that are standardized by an international standardization organization called 3GPP and indicates the conclusion of LTE service.

5-Band CA that will be provided by SK Telecom combines 5 frequencies and provides speed up to 700Mbps. Compared to LTE (75Mbps) and fastest speed of current LTE (500Mbps), it is 9 and 1.4 times faster respectively. SK Telecom has implemented 700Mbps service by combining 2 broadband frequencies (20kHz) and 3 narrowband frequencies (10kHz) and applying 256QAM (increases speed by 33%).

SK Telecom is planning to provide 5-Band CA service to 23 cities including Seoul and metropolitan cities by end of next month and to 85 major regions by first half of this year so that it can increase coverage by 51% compared to population by end of this year. It is also going to start 800Mbps service that applies 4×4 MIMO to 4-Band CA. Its goal is provide 900Mbps service and giga-level service by second half of this year and first half of next year respectively.

It was estimated that 5-Band CA technology will be commercialized in second half of this year or first half of next year. However it was possible to commercialize it early as Galaxy S8’s Exynos 9 is able to support 5-Band CA technology.

SK Telecom announced on the 20th that it will apply &amp;lsquo;5-Band CA&amp;rsquo; technology, which is called final step of evolution of LTE service, starting with Galaxy S8 and create 4.5G mobile telecommunication generation where there is no boundary between wired and wireless network.

Fact that Exynos will be used for Galaxy S series through commercialization of SK Telecom’s 5-Band CA and that Exynos 9 can support 5-Band CA are officially confirmed for the first time. SK Telecom’s users who are using Galaxy S8 can use 5-Band CA service through firmware upgrade.

SK Telecom is planning to continue to develop and carry on competitive edge so that it can apply LTE’s major technologies including 5-Band CA to 5G network.

“Although many are questioning the improvement in speed, mobile traffic has been increasing by 40% every year.” said Department Head Choi Seung-won of SK Telecom Infras Strategy Headquarters. “We are going to provide optimal environment for content use through continuous improvement in quality of network.”

SK Telecom also introduced AI (Artificial Intelligence) network in order to provide best quality of telecommunication. This network will analyze Big Data that is created from base stations in South Korea, optimize quality of telecommunication such as direction of antennas and coverage in real-time, and predict and respond to causes of changes such as rapid increase in traffic in quality.

SK Telecom applied AI network to commercialized network at the end of last year and is going to push for enhancement that additionally ties Big Data such as index of quality that is felt in real-time. It is also going to start ‘intelligent spam filtering’ in order to prevent spams and malware by end of this year.

SK Telecom applied ‘C-DRX’ technology, which increases efficiency of battery of a Smartphone up to 45%, to all of South Korea on the 20th. It is currently being applied to 121 different kinds of LTE phones that are released by SK Telecom after October of 2011 including Galaxy S7 and S8, LG’s G5 and G6, and iPhone 7 without any separate installation.